For everyone waiting impatiently for months for the much anticipated new update of Minecraft for the Xbox 360, well, the wait is over. Not only was the new update released this week, but it is so big and comprehensive with loads of new enemies, items, and content that it should keep players of the extremely popular and addictive game happy for quite some time. Some of the bigger features on the Title Update 7 are the elements related to the “End Portal” part of the game.

So what is the End Portal? According to the Minecraft Wiki, it is part of The End, “a stark, empty plane containing multiple floating planet-like islands made of a unique material known as End Stone, dotted with Obsidian pillars.” In other words, End Portals transport you to The End, a dimension where Endemen come from. End Portals are found within the portal room of a stronghold, hanging horizontally over a pool of lava, with a staircase leading up to the portal. A Silverfish spawner sits in the staircase. Some of the portal frame blocks already have Eyes of Ender in them (usually one to two), while the rest do not.

[adsense250itp]Depending on a player’s experience with Minecraft, making it to the End Portal can be fairly simple or extremely complicated. To kill the EnderDragon in the game, which will not be an easy task, you first start with Enderman where you have to get at least 12 or more Ender Pearls from the Blazes in the Nether for the Eyes of Ender and throwing them in to the air once you find a stronghold. The eyes of Ender will be floating just above the ground and that’s when you dig for the End Portal. Now you’re on a roll, because all that’s left before your fight with the EndDragon is placing the Eyes of the Ender in the portal and hop on the portal. You can’t actually make an End Portal in this update, but it is being reported that it will be a probability in the next update.

But within hours after its release there have been some problems early on with this new update as some Xbox 360 Minecraft users are having trouble with the new Title Update 7. Players on various forums are stating that they are having a hard time either downloading, opening the file, and/or incorporating it into the game. One can dismiss this as growing pains for an update that was just released and that the fine folks at Microsoft and 4J Studios will have had this resolved by press time. There other additions to the End Portal scheduled for Title Update 8 at a later date. While waiting for the complete “The End” experience on the Xbox 360 version of Minecraft, players can get in the holiday spirit by downloading the Festive Skin Pack.